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Missouri Compromise
Passed in 1820 between the pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions in the United States Congress, involving primarily the regulation of slavery in the western territories. -
Wilmot Proviso
One of the major events leading to the American Civil War, would have banned slavery in any territory to be acquired from Mexico in the Mexican War; or, in the future, including the area later known as the Mexican Cession. -
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, officially entitled the Treaty of Peace, Friendship, Limits and Settlement between the United States of America and the Mexican Republic, is the peace treaty signed on February 2, 1848, in the Villa de Guadalupe Hidalgo between the U.S. and Mexico that ended the Mexican–American War. -
Know-Nothing Party
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Compromise of 1850
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Fugitive Slave Act
The Fugitive Slave Law or Fugitive Slave Act was passed by the United States Congress on September 18, 1850, as part of the Compromise of 1850 between Southern slave-holding interests and Northern Free-Soilers. This was one of the most controversial elements of the 1850 compromise and heightened Northern fears of a "slave power conspiracy". It required that all escaped slaves were, upon capture, to be returned to their masters and that officials and citizens of free states. -
Uncle Tom's Cabin
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Gadsden Purchase
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Republican Party
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Bleeding Kansas
Started in 1854 and ended in 1861 -
Kansas/Nebraska Act
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Election of 1856
Held on Tuesday, November 4th, 1856. -
Dred Scott vs. Sanford
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued February 11–14, 1856
Reargued December 15–18, 1856
Decided March 6, 1857 -
Lincoln- Douglas Debates
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John Brown's Raid @ Harper's Ferry
On the evening of October 16, 1859 John Brown, a staunch abolitionist, and a group of his supporters left their farmhouse hide-out en route to Harpers Ferry. Descending upon the town in the early hours of October 17th, Brown and his men captured prominent citizens and seized the federal armory and arsenal. Brown had hopes that the local slave population would join the raid and through the raid’s success weapons would be supplied to slaves and freedom fighters throughout the country; this was no -
Election of 1860
Held on Tuesday, November 6th, 1860.
The United States had been divided during the 1850s on questions surrounding the expansion of slavery and the rights of slave owners. In 1860, these issues broke the Democratic Party into Northern and Southern factions, and a new Constitutional Union Party appeared. In the face of a divided opposition, the Republican Party, dominant in the North, secured a majority of the electoral votes, putting Abraham Lincoln in the White House with almost no support from -
Secession
Began in 1860 and ended in 1861. Secession, as it applies to the outbreak of the American Civil War, comprises the series of events that began on December 20, 1860, and extended through June 8 of the next year when eleven states in the Lower and Upper South severed their ties with the Union. The first seven seceding states of the Lower South set up a provisional government at Montgomery, Alabama. After hostilities began at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor on April 12, 1861, the border states of
